April 4, 2011, should be noted as a particularly bad day if you are a peace-loving, Bush-hating, grassroots activist who once loved Barack Obama. It was a day of disappointments.

Yesterday, Mr. Obama launched his second presidential campaign with a detached video and an impersonal email. This was not a deal-breaker, yet he might have dismayed some campaign finance supporters with his goal of a $1 billion campaign war chest filled by powerful, rich donors. And yes, his most adoring anti-war fans have been troubled by a third Middle East war in Libya.

Yesterday marked the anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., but in his online announcement the president failed to mark the day, upsetting civil rights supporters and others.

But the issue that clearly overshadowed yesterday’s re-election announcement? Attorney General Eric Holder pulling the plug on his long-promised New York civil trial for September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and his co-conspirators. The White House had no statement about the reversal, and referred all press queries to the Justice Department.

With the Holder capitulation complete, it constituted a full abandonment of a signature Obama campaign promise. And to add insult to injury, the attorney general embraced the hated Bush policy of trying terrorists before military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay.

Just hours after the Obama campaign texted its launch announcement to supporters, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that purported 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other suspected 9/11 plotters will be tried by Obama’s version of the Bush-era military commissions.

Baumann’s post is a teachable moment, a picture-perfect view of the Left’s delusions: he defends the principal architect of the September 11 attacks as the “purported” mastermind; his co-defendants are only “suspects.”

Baumann continued:

So on the same day he formally asked America for a second term in office, Barack Obama moved to ensure that the Bush administration’s Guantanamo Bay-based system of two-tiered justice for horrific terrorism-related crimes will endure.

On the same day that President Obama announced the launch of his 2012 reelection campaign, he abandoned one of his major promises from 2008.

The convergence of events may not have been coincidence. Obama Chief of Staff William Daley — as his predecessor Rahm Emanuel — most likely saw the New York trials as death to the Democratic Party up and down the ballot in electorally rich New York State. A large contingent of rational Democrats understood that to proceed with a civilian trial for the terrorists — awarding them rights they never gave to their 9/11 victims — would doom their chances for re-election in 2012.

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) issued the memorable quote of the day on the reversal, hailing Holder’s announcement as the “final nail in the coffin of that wrong-headed idea.”

The Huffington Post echoed Holder’s spin: Congress was to blame, not the White House. But that excuse did not fly with their writers Michael McAuliff and Jon Ward:

The Obama administration quickly scapegoated Congress to explain the decision.

Clearly, the assessment among the president’s most ardent progressive supporters was that the Holder announcement was yet another reason to walk away from the Obama reelection effort. Staying home might be the more preferred route, unless a primary opponent challenged the president for the Democratic nomination.

The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer wrote that she felt personally betrayed by Attorney General Holder. For her, the personal became political: Holder once privately confided to Mayer that his decision to end military tribunals for terrorists was for him a “defining moment” for his term as attorney general. Mayer blogged:

[It] may indeed be the defining moment for the Obama Justice Department, defining it, unfortunately, as incapable of standing up to to the political passions still stirred by the threat of terrorism.

The decision is clearly driven not by the nature of the alleged offense, or where and when it was committed, but by the unpopularity of the detainee and the political culture in Washington.

Andrea Prasow, who is described as a “senior counter terrorism counsel” at the activist group Human Rights Watch, wrote:

[Obama] has squandered a key opp0rtunity to reject the unlawful counter terrorism policies of the past. … [He has] sacrificed fundamental protections under the U.S. constitution and international law in what may be the single most important case of President Obama’s tenure.

It’s the haunting 43rd anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination (which Obama’s materials don’t mention). … Finally, Monday was the day Obama broke a campaign promise by announcing that 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Muhammed would be tried in a military tribunal at Guantánamo.

The Daily Beast had an abbreviated item about the administration’s reversal in its “must read” section, but told its readers that to learn more they should go to CBS. There, if you wanted to find it, in the last paragraph CBS National Homeland Security Correspondent Bob Orr was quoted simply as saying that today’s announcement “is an embarrassment for the administration.”

There are some true believers who will always tow the line. Among the official organs of the American Left, the Holder decision did not appear as news anywhere. You couldn’t find a word of it at the websites of the Center for American Progress, the Campaign for America’s Future, or at the anti-war Institute for Policy Analysis.

And Media Matters, obsessed with Fox News and Glenn Beck, also had nothing to say about it.

Richard Pollock is the Washington, D.C., editor for PJ Media and the Washington bureau chief of PJTV.

Click here to view the 45 legacy comments

Click here to hide legacy comments

45 Comments, 28 Threads

1.
Walt C

I’m starting to wonder if Obama is trying to lose re-election. If he is tired of being POTUS, but doesn’t want to be labeled a quitter, he just has to alienate his base and follow Carter in losing re-election, the whole time blaming Bush for leaving him such a mess to deal with.

Then he could golf all he wants, have a couple more books ghost written for him and hit the university talk circuit and make A LOT more money than his current salary. And let the missus quit bitching about the press all the time.

The most amusing way to get an idea of how bad a day it was for Obama and Holder is the lampooning piece called “What? Another Bush Policy Win?”:
“A bemused-face White House secretary pushes past a dark spectacle burly man in a trench coat and whispers in the President’s ear, “We found Mr. Holder, Sir”.
“Good, ask him in” , he responds.
“You mean, shove-him in, sir? He is resisting.”
- “Hey Al-Alonso”, he shouts at the burly man, “go with Miss Bemusa and give her a hand”.
“A few seconds later a beanie-eye unshaven Holder comes in swinging his feet but not touching the ground with Al-Alonso acting as a motor pool”. . . . . .Continue at http://www.robbingamerica.com

a-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. ROFLMAO. Are the libtards dismayed that their dear leader fell out of lock step? You’re ‘dismayed’? The administration was “embarrassed”? You can’t even see what an embarrassment the past two years have been to real Americans, can you? How does it feel, you idiots? WE are taking our country back – it won’t be pretty, but we WILL take it back. And YOU are done.

It was an interesting ‘ad’. Obama, the One, the Messiah, the Savior, was missing. Otherwise – there were some strong similarities. And some dissimilarities.

There was still, as in 2008, no policy, no program. Just ambiguous references to…’the future’. And, the same insistence on ‘Trust’ in the Dear Leader…was still there. But the onus, this time, was turned to the electorate. You, the voter, HAVE to have faith, have to keep ‘the trust’ in Obama…to guide and lead you into this ambiguous future. Trust. Trust.

This is basic Obama – who is always above and outside of the real hard facts of reality…and instead, lives only in the imaginary world of future-oriented vague images and words.

So far, however, there is no Evil Other to position oneself against, to set oneself up as a Shining Light. Against Bush. The GOP have been careful to deny such an ‘Other’ to Obama.

Obama does, however, have a problem. He can’t run on his record! What he has done, or rather, what he has allowed the Democratic Party to do is all deeply unpopular. Quite a list, including that disastrous ‘stimulus’ (really a pork barrel to loyal Democrats in the public service); his health care which all his union buddies are opting out of…etc…his disastrous foreign policies, his equally disastrous internal policies of no jobs, refusing to secure the borders and etc….

So, he can’t run on his record. Instead, he seems to be running on ‘Unfinished business’…and you have to trust in Obama.

Is that good enough? I think that it’s obvious that he dislikes the work of being president ..but then, he has never worked, seriously, at anything in his entire life. Think of it. Editor of the Harvard Law Review – and edited nothing, wrote no articles; left it to others. Lecturer in law…just following the course outline. Community organizer…just cheering on activists. Senator..just voted ‘present’.

Obama is ignorant of history, economics, political theory and lacks both the intellectual curiosity and the work ethic to research them. He has always, all his life, relied only on personal interaction and manipulation of others to ‘get along’. He, himself, never makes a single decision about anything; he delegates it all; he waits for someone else to come up with the policy or program.

I think the problem is – that the Democrats are stuck with him. The party has, unlike the GOP, deliberately kept new blood out of the party, has prevented any and all criticisms of Obama (who, as a clinical narcissist, can’t handle any criticism), has effectively locked themselves into ‘selecting’ only Obama. They have prevented anyone else from the field.

Since they can’t run on his absymmal record, can’t run against Bush, then..what can they run on? At the moment..Trust-in-Obama. And hope, hope that the jobs market will change and hope also, that the economy does lurch..even into trouble..so that they can Blame the GOP for it.

Mr. Pollock:
“April 4, 2011, should be noted as a particularly bad day if you are a peace-loving, Bush-hating, grassroots activist who once loved Barack Obama. It was a day of disappointments.”

Well, sure…but the Alleged Hawaiian Messiah has done stuck it in and broken it off sideways in the moonbats’ collective so often at this point that the wonder is that they even notice it at all anymore, see?

Oh…it’s Obama again…”Yes We Can”, so just close your eyes and think of “Hope and Change”.

Most of the individuals and organizations quoted above who are so “disappointed” in Holder’s decision don’t give a damn about Khalid Sheik Mohammed. They could care less if he is guilty or innocent although many would undoubtedly be pleased if he is somehow found “not guilty” since they believe the U.S. “deserved’ the 9/11 attacks.

No – They are pissed off because trying KSM before a military tribunal denies them the opportunity to subpoena Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al and use the discovery process to try and dig up more dirt on the Bush administration. It means that they can’t float all of the crack-brained theories about who “really” was responsible for the attacks and demand millions of pages of U.S. documents to “prove” their case. The chance for a real anti-American circus with “human rights” attorneys loudly proclaiming their own virtue is now gone,

In their rush to, once again, put the ziggy to the Bush administration the Obamites forgot the rules of politics. I am sure that Schumer and the, shall we say, more “forceful” elements of the New York Democratic Party really took both Obama and Holder to the woodshed on this one.

Regarding Baumann’s Mother Jones article, the courts in our country work on the presumption of innocence, I don’t know if Military tribunals work any differently. The change from purported or suspect reflects the outcome of the trial only our judicial system changes that status.

Baumann’s article isn’t a declaration of disbelief in the case against Khalid, it’s simply Journalism 101, if by some freak of nature KSM is proven innocent, Mother Jones could be sued for libel.

Perhaps you should write or call Mr. Baumann to make sure you portrayed his position accurately. It seems to me like you’re misrepresenting the facts.

Hmm, says under a military tribunal the accused is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, i.e. Baumann is honoring an established tradition in the media of sticking to the facts.

The press refers to defendants as “the accused” or “suspected” because until the tribunal or courts declare them guilty. Pollock is either ignorant of this rather well known journalistic convention or dishonest.

So which is it, is Pollock a rube, or a liar?

Like I said, if he really want’s to know if Baumann thinks that KSM is guilty he could email him. Somehow I think he’s more inclined to just quote people out of context.

Holder and his boss are a couple of naive romantics when it comes to the realities associated with the human debris known as the 9/11 conspirators.
The NY Congressional delegation was uniformly opposed to the idea of a Manhattan trial. Obama is so arrogant that he didn’t bother consulting with them before Holder announced the plan for a New York City trial in November of 2009. Since then a Democrat majority Congress thought so much of this screwball idea that they defunded the trials and the other absurdity, moving these killers to Illinois.

Obama’s promises have an expiration date, someone observed. That is a cogent point. So far he has backtracked on Guantonomo, Repealing Bush Tax rates, trying the conspirators in NY District Court, ending the war in Iraq by the end of 2010, 5 days to read a bill before it is voted on, no tax increases for those who earn less than 250k (Obamacare will be the largest tax increase in US history when it goes into effect) enacting Cap and Trade, transparency ….I could go on and on and on.

The incompetence of this administrations decision making on all fronts, the latest being the Libya fiasco, is uniform. Obama is the Colonel Klink of presidents and Biden is the Barney Fife. I can’t tell who Holder is, but he might be Otis.

Candidate Barack Hussein Obama’s ambiguous, slick campaign promise of “Change We Can Believe In” had as much substance as George W. Bush’s “Compassionate Conservatism,” Bill Clinton’s “Putting People First,” and Al Gore’s “Prosperity and Progress.”

Of course, slogans are just slogans. Precious little that was compassionate or conservative resulted from Bush’s Democrat-light economic policies, the only people Clinton ever put first were Monica and his other girlfriends, and Gore fortunately never got a chance to strut his version of progress to the American people.

To his credit, Obama has brought change to Washington, more and more radical change than all but his most ardent supporters could have anticipated. Still, he would have been more honest had he campaigned on his socialistic slip of the lip made to Joe the Plumber. He would not have won with the slogan ”Share the Wealth!” but he would have shown some integrity.

Many changes are in progess, though. Reports that food stamp participation on his watch has balooned by 50% certainly prove he is fulfilling that pledge to his constituency.

Obamian foreign policy changes have dominated the news of late principally with regard to Libya where we are now engaged in our third Mideast war which is not really a war but what the White House in a marvel of linguistic distortion terms “a kinetic military action” and not a war.

One more change.

Another dubious but noteworthy change is apparent in America’s Afghanistan real war: Our military has lost 858 soldiers or 60.13 of the total fatalities there since Obama took office twenty six months ago: http://bit.ly/eCLfTG

Maybe he’s actually trying to win that war? Don’t bet on it. Keep in mind, this is Obama.

Something and someone else to keep in mind in this brief look at recent changes in D.C. is the conversion of the Department of Justice under Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder into an agency dedicated and committed to getting even for the long-dead evil of slavery. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4070)

Berlet,
Right on, good points all. Here is something else I just learned.

Todd Beamer’s dad testified before a congressional subcommitee today that he was completely ignored by Obama and Holder’s Justice Dept. This shows you just how compassionate these two liberals really are, they are devoid of human feeling and numbed out because their mindset is that the state should take care of the afflicted. They as human beings are insulated and isolated from the needs of others, except objectively and from comfortably afar. Remember Obama gave miniscule amounts to charity prior to running for President, despite his multi million dollar royalties and his wifes hospital salary that was in excess of 180,000 a year.

With these two liberals it’s always the states job, they are supremely good at removing themselves from the responsibility of actually helping people. Mr Beamer watched his son be sacrificed to save others, Todd was and is a hero. Yet Holder has no time for Mr Beamer. He is much more interested in terminating any prosecution of his New Black Panther friends.

What an absolutely pathetic excuse for a human being Holder is. His skin flint boss is no better.

I’m pretty sure this time around I won’t have to endure the starry-eyed gushing about “electing a real intellectual” like I did last time. Everything Obama does is pure, cynical politics, governed by polls and geared toward votes. He’s just more ham-handed than most.

He thought he didn’t have to do anything, just say he is running for re-election and file the trash he had to file; that’s all.

His handlers have told him that he’s going to be re-elected, come rain or sunshine.

If you don’t like it, start getting ready to take it: it will take about $1 bill (that’s about $15/vote – assuming about 67 mill votes for him, the States’ Sec. of State will announce that he got) and a lot of electoral fraud.

Radical regimes never give up power through (honest, open) elections. This is no exception.

13. Original Cynic
He thought he didn’t have to do anything, just say he is running for re-election and file the trash he had to file; that’s all.
———————-
I have always believed that when Obama ran for president, he really didn’t think it would be that difficult. My reason for saying this is Ted Kennedy’s support for him. Kennedy probably told him not to worry about anything because he would help him. Kennedy always wanted to be president, and he probably saw Obama’s election as a way of being president through Obama. May sound silly, but I don’t think it is. I also don’t think Obama wants another four years in office, and the voters should help him get out of that White House prison that he lives in.

The Obama campaign video sent a chill up my spine. It shows people in the typical Obamunist stupor: starry-eyed, almost drugged, and gushing emotion. Interesting that the video does not contain a single fact, accomplishment, or argument. “Come join us,” it says in effect, “so that you can be relieved of the need to think.”

The exaggerated intellect of Obama, praised by his cohorts and the msm, who dwell on his nostradamus like phrophecies of the future, fail to expose his failures of the present. They dare not to challenge his credibility or evasive actions. They dare not to expose his inept rhetoric, or condemn his phony and prejudice integrity. They undermine all, who dares to question his ideology and radical agenda. They fail to recognize the incredible injustice being forced on the American people, by their actions and words. Come on 2012, time for a change.

The ever more oily Mark Mardell, on the BBC, predictably trotted out the Holder spin verbatim. Mardell used to make excuses for the anti-democrats in Brussels. Now he makes them for the Democrats in DC. Is there a pattern in his behaviour?

New York City, the City That Never Sleeps, wasn’t sleeping well recently after a 20-inch Egyptian cobra slithered away from home at the Bronx Zoo’s Reptile House and made the papers again with reports of a dirty bomb drill and a Health Department memo to employees on worker etiquette.

Well-accustomed to tragedies, the Big Apple is making a concerted effort to prepare for the inevitable, another terrorist attack this time utilizing radiological weapons instead of commercial airliners to wreak havoc and visit destruction.

To counter that eventuality, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly announced a 5-day massive deployment of some 70 multi-region law enforcement agencies designed to interdict such an attack: “We’ll be manning up to 400 checkpoints throughout the Metropolitan Area to test our ability to intercept radiological material. There actually will be samples of radiological materials.” http://bit.ly/fBABBj

For the curious, a dirty bomb, also known as a radiological weapon or a radiological dispersal device (RDD), is a conventional explosive packed with radioactive materials designed to kill with the initial blast and then to contaminate an area with airborne radiation.

The good news is that a dirty bomb is not technically a nuclear weapon and one has never been used in warfare; the bad news is that it is a weapon of mass destruction, is easily assembled, and can be delivered in a suitcase.

It’s heartening to see Commisioner Kelly mobilizing for another potential attack but its efficacy is dubious at best considering the vast area to be covered and the inadequacy of any efforts to guard against and then to combat the devastating effects of what could be coordinated and multiple plantings of dirty bombs by insane, terrorist lunatics.

Another point to be considered is President Barack Hussein’s little noted admission of the country’s inability to deal with such attacks which he conceded last year to Bob Woodward. During an interview with Woodward in July, the president also said, “We can absorb a terrorist attack. We’ll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever . . . we absorbed it and we are stronger:” http://bit.ly/fYvhsj

That was the rough equivalent of Bush’s, “Bring it on” except that Obama wasn’t referring to Iraqis bringing it on our troops but to terrorists bringing mayhem to our shores. If Obama believes we can “absorb” nukes and be just fine, does he even think about dirty bombs? If we can’t avoid it, why bother with pretend mobilizations, checkpoints,etc.?

Still, kudos to the NYPD and Commisioner Kelly for staging what is essentially a charade.

On a much lighter topic, presidential wannabe, now resigned to be a lowly multibillionaire and mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg has established himself as undisputed king of mayoral nannies and his minions are now following suit.

Bloomberg, who had New York City’s Charter changed so he could run for a third term in office, has battled like an old granny-nanny against the evils of his city. However, murders, muggings, rapes, burglaries, and other crimes haven’t attracted his interest and concern nearly as much as salt, soda, sugar, calories, and trans fats being consumed by city residents and visitors.

On the 4th day of the 4th month of April, being the 44th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination, Barack Obama, the 44th president of the US (born on the 4th day of August and elected president on November 4th) launched his campaign for reelection. He couldn’t have picked a more inauspicious day…..

Click my name to read the rest of this ominous piece on Obama’s bad timing to launch his campaign.

Oh, poor Obozo! A bad day in the palace of “hope and dreams” — as in “Hope I can keep conning stupid white American crackers and fulfill my dream of being Dictator for Life.” How is it possible for any functional adult, black, white, brown or yellow, to give this grotesque poseur the time of day? The time he deserves is twenty years behind bars.

I’m nearing 70 years of age and never in my memory have I seen someone holding that office who’s so inept yet viewed by his press sycophants as some sort of genius. Not even Jimmy Carter–and that’s saying something. I don’t think he has a hope in hell of being reelected and he knows it. The GOP could drag a drunk off of skid row and nominate him and Obama would still lose. My only fear is that the GOP will nominate some RINO whose “turn” they think it is to run.

Interesting that this was done electronically, with Obama hovering, aloof, from the announcement. I have a theory: he’s going to be hard to find during the campaign. Most noticeably, he will refuse to debate.

“In case y’all hadn’t noticed, I’ve been in the news from time to time during the last four years [appreciative laughter] — for holdin’ a job that has a lot of presidential-like responsibilities [laughter, applause]. And by now, I’m sure people know where I stand on the issues. I don’t see any need to go flying around, meetin’ these Republicans who use debates to snippet me and quote me out of context [chuckle of acknowledgment] just so we can draw more blood and divide the country further. And besides, it turns out this job keeps me busy [laughter]. For the past four years, I feel like I’ve had the job of two presidents — one to do a sort of Take Two of the eight years before me, and another to simply do the work I’m supposed to do . . . “[continues campaign speech to ongoing applause and laudatory press].

“Many people believe that, if he’s guilty of the crimes he’s accused of—namely, the cold-blooded murder of thousands of Americans—KSM deserves to die.”–Some scumbag

Yeah, and he could have been executed years ago if it wasn’t for terrorist-loving, left wing traitors (like our current president) who are fine with the idea of executing a right wing scumbag like Tim McVeigh, but have managed to arrange matters so that left wing killers (like some of the Weathermen) or Muslim terrorists (basically, the current darlings of most leftoid traitors) never face the ultimate penalty.

It’s a great system. German saboteurs, who never harmed a soul, are promptly executed by the Roosevelt administration, after a trial by a military commission. Muslim terrorists who have murdered thousands of Americans often can’t even be brought to trial, much less ever executed when George Bush is president.

Good point. However we need to go back to 3/28/11. On that day the famous or rather infamous speach of Hussein Obama was aired on TV. It was the chance for whole nation to rally against him. It was the last chance for the Congress to stand with the nation and start impeachment procedure for the illegal Libya war. But everything went good. We we the people were silent. Some even liked the speach they clapped their hands and smiled. So the waters were tested thus making 04/04/11 announcement a home run.